ABCe: Another Month, Another Record for Guardian.co.uk
Guardian.co.uk has become the first National Newspaper website to break the 26 million unique users mark, according to data released by ABCe.
The digital arm of the Guardian News & Media owned paper attracted a record amount of readers in November, although it was only up 67,000 compared with the record breaking figures from the previous month. Guardian.co.uk has had an impressive twelve months, gaining overall YOY growth of 50%.
The second most popular national audited website actually lost a quarter of a million users since its spike of interest during the American Presidential elections in October. However, Telegraph.co.uk still managed to hold onto just under 23 million people in November. The Telegraph’s website has experienced unusually high growth over the past year, with an increase of 80%. The website’s popularity has been growing steadily since it reported 12 million users in November 2007, though seems to have halted at the 22/23 million mark since August 2008.
Times Online has had quite a similar year, with a YOY growth of 75%, which represents the overall National Newspaper market’s impressive online offerings in 2008. In November, the News International site had 21.5 million unique users reading its stories on the internet, an increase of over 1 million from the previous month.
Mail Online slipped down one place in popularity as a result, alongside the site’s own decline. ABCe reported 350,000 less unique users over the month, though Mail Online still boasts a healthy 20 million users in total. Although shadowed by its more successful counterparts, Mail Online has been slowly gaining momentum in numbers with a YOY increase of 44%.
Sun Online remains in fifth place, with 16.4 million unique users. However, despite losing nearly 700,000 users since October and seeing an uncharacteristic drop in page impressions, the Sun Online still remains by far the most successful sites in terms of its user retention. Sites such as Sunbingo.co.uk & Dreamteamfc.com saw the number of page impressions produced remain ahead of its competitors, with a total of 249 million in November.
Independent.co.uk saw its numbers increase slightly, making it the sixth most popular site of all the audited websites, with 8.8 million unique users. The website hasn’t seen as much of a significant increase as some of its rivals, however, it has managed to gain 92% growth YOY.
Mirror Group Digital, home of people.co.uk, saw just under 6 million people visit the website during November. ABCe reports an increase of 1.5 million since the network began releasing figures in March 2008.
*ABCe defines Unique User as “The total number of unique combinations of a valid identifier, Sites may use (i)IP+UserAgent, (ii) Cookie and/or (iii) Registration ID.” Note that where USERS are allocated IP addresses dynamically (for example by dial-up Internet Service Providers), this definition may overstate or understate the real number of individual USERS concerned.
ABC Electronic: 01442 870 800 www.abce.org.uk